paul is not generally opposed to “manageable” deficit budgets provided there is a strong rationale for the strategy and a pathway back to balance over the budget cycle. This is plausible and manageable in an organisation like the City of Launceston where the annual budget is approximately $150m.

What paul advocates for in the context of the City of Launceston budget is deeper community engagement in budget priority setting and decisive action on shaping spending to meet community priorities. paul has noted in another post a proposal to engage the Launceston community through digital democracy technology, particularly the novel idea of producing a “budget simulator” that invites the community to submit their ideas and simulated efforts to balance the budget using the online tool.

Limiting the”rate rise” each year is a popular and worthy goal, however beyond this, paul believes there are significant choices to be made about spending priorities. paul will seek to post his ideas on budget repair below. paul’s idea for budget savings and re-prioritisation would include:

• serious debate on the size, scale, scope and return on investment of the more than $2m per annum  in “contributions” to organisations in the North, particularly those that perform aligned tourism, event and CBD promotional functions. Could this work be pulled back “in house”, building the internal capacity of council and save rate payer dollars on the duplicated functions?
• consult with community on waste collection frequency; floating the concept of fortnightly collection (given the volume of regular bin ‘waste’ has reduced with the introduction of recycling and green bins) and identify savings from the next waste collection contractor arrangement.
• requiring all “sister city” program activities to remain online, and eliminate international travel costs for the life of the next council (2026-2030)

Additional thoughts include:

Po: Could the City of Launceston introduce a “Where are my rates spent?” online dashboard that shows monthly progress on the annual action plan and budget/spending (written in plain-language showing pressures and options considered)? Could this level of transparency use some of the learnings from the United Kingdom where councils have to report (Local Government Transparency Code 2015) via interactive online tools to show detailed spending breakdowns, data on supplier payments over a set value, senior officer salaries, and contracts awarded.